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Colleges Tell Tour Guides to Stop Walking Backwards

RUTH FREMSON/The New York TimesIf a consulting firm called TargetX has its way, tour guides (like Emily Pavlos of Franklin & Marshall College) will be directed to turn around and walk forwards.

For years, parents and high school students have marveled at the ability of campus tour guides to walk backwards while talking (and talking, and talking some more), and, for the most part, not tripping.

Increasingly, though, colleges are telling their guides to turn around and walk forward — to facilitate more natural conversations, as well as to soothe the anxieties of mothers in particular, who tend to worry about their guides falling over curbs or toppling over signs that weren’t there the day before.

There are even consultants advising colleges (sometimes for fees exceeding $10,000), to overhaul their campus tours, not only by rotating their guides 180 degrees but also by encouraging them to throw away their statistics-laden scripts. (One is called, somewhat ominously, TargetX.)

As colleges continue to compete for the most talented students — and, in some cases, the applicants with the deepest pockets — they are making over their tours, the better to make a good first impression.

I’ve written a story about this trend — set at Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas — which you can read here on the Times’s Web site.

Meanwhile, The Choice would like to begin collecting your videos of campus tours — shot by parents and students, and perhaps the colleges themselves. We’re particularly interested in images of places on campus that might be off the beaten path. You may submit your videos by using the form below. If you don’t see a form, use this direct link.

We hope to begin posting selected videos soon. To tell us of your experiences with campus tours, either as a guide or visitor, please use the comment box below.

To see some campus-tour videos that already exist on the Internet, you can go to the web sites of Pomona College and Middlebury College. To see how a staid campus tour can be an easy target for pranksters, click on this video on YouTube of a tour gone awry at the University of Virginia. My thanks to my colleague Rebecca Ruiz for hunting down these images.

I was a campus tourguide at the Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison 25 years ago and we were trained then to never walk backwards in front of the tour and talk. ( it makes the tour participants nervous that you will trip) We were also encouraged to personalize our presentation to the prospective students as well as ask questions and tailor the tour to the interests of that particular group if you were able. There was a woman named Pat Watkins (I think) who was Director of New Student Services. She ran a great Department. This hardly seems like a “trend” and much more like colleges getting a common sense clue about 25 years too late. NYT…Is this really news?

As a recent high school grad, I went through college visits last spring, and I can testify to how important and influential a tour can be. The colleges I visited were all 500+ miles away, so I really only knew them on paper. Seeing them with my own eyes really changed my perception, and the student tour guides really colored my impressions of the university. For example, one school I really hadn’t considered much moved to the top of my list due to its excellent campus tour. As for that whole walking backwards thing, I can’t say I particularly noticed it much. The guides were too busy cracking jokes and telling anecdotes about their universities, and we were too awed.

I agree – not really news. My college never forced us to walk backward but it is helpful when you’re trying to get through buildings and get a certain amount of important information across in just an hour. I would walk backward when it was appropriate, but mostly would look forward. Personal anecdotes are great, but when you’re trying to sell to both parents and kids you have to make sure the stories are appropriate for all audiences.

As a student tour guide, I can say that Marlboro College tours have been conducted while walking forwards for years. The tour is all about positive interactions between prospective students and current students, not just about a bunch of facts and figures. It’s about making students and parents feel comfortable enough to ask questions and getting real answers about college life that administrators may not know how to answer, or may not be comfortable answering. And when you’re actually speaking to a student, you know if they want to see the art buildings or the science center and if they have no interest in the gym or the pottery shed. A campus tour is all about showing the student what isn’t in the photos online or in the guide books – it’s about helping them form the crucial decision: Can I see myself succeeding and being happy at this college?

And instead of spending a bunch of money to figure out that tours work better when they’re more personal, why not hire more tour guides? The smaller a tour is, the more successful it is and the more comfortable the student is talking to the tour guide. It makes for a better experience and it’s much easier to get a true impression of a school that way. Colleges should focus more on fit than numbers when accepting students. If someone comes to Marlboro wanting to play a bunch of Varsity sports or asking about fraternities and if the party weekend starts on Wednesday, I have no qualms about advising the student that that’s not what they’re going to find on our campus.

Tours where drug and alcohol use, parties, showing dorm rooms and total honesty are forbidden things are bound to lure prospective students into unwise choices and unhappiness with their college choice, leading to a miserable freshman year and a future of transferring colleges any number of times before they find one where they really fit in.

Having visited at least 15 colleges over the last year and a half, I think that this article ignores the most influential part of the tour: the guide. It doesn’t matter if he’s walking forward and telling personal anecdotes if he’s a jerk.

At one tour at Penn, our tour guide was simply obnoxious. He had an air of superiority, and was extremely condescending during his anecdotes, putting down other colleges and their students. By the end of the tour, I had absolutely no interest in attending the school.

When in the world have you ever had a non-college tour that was conducted by a guide walking backward?! I have been to countless museums, palaces, gardens, city blocks, mansions, etc., and do not recall a single tour in which the guide walked backward. You walk forward, stop, turn around and face your guests and talk, and then commence walking forward along with the guests… Simple. Easy. It lets the guests listen while focusing on the sights, not being distracted by the tour guide’s face or chest.

No wonder universities are in such financial trouble. They need to hire a consultant to tell them this.

Backwards, forwards – it doesn’t really matter. What matters most is being able to hear what the guide is saying, and having what the guide is saying be germane to what the visitors are asking about.

My daughter and I went on 8 or 9 tours last summer and the worst one was Johns Hopkins where the guide wore a speaker around her waist and we still couldn’t understand her. This was the only school with this kind of apparatus and the only one we had to struggle to hear.

Second worst was Cornell, where the guide (despite being an engineering student) gave the impression of being something of an airhead and did a very poor job of dealing with the several questions she could not answer. Parents were laughing (at her, not with her) at the lame attempts at answers.

As a father of triplets about to begin their freshman year of college, I toured close to 25 colleges within the past 2 years. Without a doubt, the tour guide makes a huge impact on your impression of the school. We’ve had private tours, and tours where there was one guide for over a hundred students and parents. Sometimes I wondered what the president of the university would say if they heard what we heard on some of those tours!

As a student tour guide at a top-tier liberal arts school, I don’t understand the reason behind a feature article devoted to doing tours forward as opposed to backward. I think either is fine. While my admissions department prefers its tour guides to walk backward, I do whichever one is easier for me based upon the particular group of prospective students and families. At a school like mine, we have so many families come in that it is impossible to give personalized tours based on what everyone wants, but I do tailor my talking points to what people are interested in. I try to be as personable as possible, but as much as a tour guide can influence a student, the student can influence the tour guide. I hate when students look like they have no interest or don’t ask any questions (or when the parents do all of the question-asking). Believe me when I say that tour guides take notice of these things.

As a recent graduate of (and a tour guide at) Princeton University, I am a proud member of the backwards walking club. This article cites only Hendrix College (where just 1,765 students visit the campus annually) as an example of a school where tour guides walk forwards. When a typical tour consists of five people (as seen in the picture accompanying the article), this is possible. At Princeton, where a typical tour is over 20 people, and in the summer where a typical tour is over 50 people (per guide – this is with 5-7 guides per tour slot), this is definitely not possible. While the “walk, stop, then talk” approach is sometimes an option, Emily Pavlos (from F&M) is right to point out its shortcomings – you simply can’t tour enough of the campus if you’re spending most of your time standing still.

To the tour guide from Marlboro: you’re absolutely right that “The tour is all about positive interactions between prospective students and current students, not just about a bunch of facts and figures.” But you can’t learn about a school, feel comfortable interacting with the current student, or get real answers to your questions when you’re at the back of a 50-person tour and your guide is facing forwards – away from you. Your school is one-fourth the size of Hendrix, and it is feasible for you to give tours facing forward. But it is not feasible for all schools, nor does it necessarily provide the best campus tour.

I was a campus tour guide last year for Wheaton College (IL). Your article seems to assume that having tour guides turn around is a new phenomenon, but for the last few years at Wheaton, tour guides have been discouraged from walking backwards at all times (during walking portions, that is). Only once during the tour were we “officially” able to walk backwards — and for only 20 seconds at that!! (Not to mention walking forwards encourages people, especially the slow walkers, to keep up with you — as a result you can cover more places in less time! :-P)

Your article also tells of tour guides being encouraged to be more anecdotal than statistical in their tours. Our tour guide training manual intentionally put in 90 minutes worth of material for a tour that is supposed to last from 60-75 minutes long. The admissions office told us to selectively pick and choose the facts we want to share/places we should visit depending on the interests of the students (we were supposed to ask each student about his/her academic and extracurricular interests before the tour started) and their parents. We were also encouraged to make 50% of our tour narrative, speaking personally and experientially about what college life is like. We were told that these are the things that visitors actually want to hear.

And our tour guide trainers were absolutely right.

As most of the visitors who came to the college visited multiple colleges at the same time, statistical facts would undoubtedly be forgotten. But stories were what people remembered the most. This has been shown to be the case when new students run into the person who gave them their campus tour and tell him/her how much that story s/he told or that experience s/he shared really made a difference in the college decision process.

It’s ridiculous to have to hire consultants for that much money to train people to walk forwards and not speak from a script. The effort that the college ITSELF puts into training their tour guides will reflect how much they actually care about the students who may choose to attend that school someday.

As a parent of a high school senior, we’ve spent the past three years visiting as many colleges as possible. To me, the most important aspect of the article – and the work of TargetX and their client colleges – is that they are thinking critically about the prospective student experience. They understand that what students and parents want is an authentic immersion into the college experience – and for that to happen, schools must break out of the old-school mind set of ‘if you build it (and walk backwards) they will come’. It’s nice to know that some schools get it (and that they are smart enough to seek expert guidance to help them execute well). It’s all about creating an experience that creates a positive, lasting memory.

Now that my daughter is in the midst of completing applications – the schools that created a personal, authentic experience are the ones that my daughter remembers – and is applying to.

I have been a campus tour guide for the past two years and yes i have done both walking backwards and walking forwards. I have to say for my own personal style it is better for me to walk backwards. I am a very tall man and i can make sure the people in the back hear everything i am saying. I always take time to make sure each and every person on my tours can hear me and gets the same chance to ask me as many questions as the people in the front. For all the people who are saying that the tour guide said things they should not have or that the school would be upset with the guides then i think it is all wrong. Each and every tour guide needs to make his/her own style of doing a tour. Yes some jokes might seem offensive or wrong but its up to the tour guide to really show what campus life is like.

I have been known to say the facts and show the fun all at the same time. It has been a great experience being a tour guide and i have made great connections and ive had a lot of fun. I have my own style and to all of you ask your self did that tour guide have his/her style and did they perfect it?

Being a tour guide is sweet and walking forward or backwards i know that i have my own style and it works!!

Without a doubt the best campus tour our family has taken (three prospective college students in two years) was at Earlham College in Indiana. Our tour guide spent a few minutes before the tour having the students introduce themselves, their parents, and share their interests. She walked forwards when it was appropriate and backwards when it was appropriate. She mixed her tour with some facts, made sure to address the interests of the students, and shared some personal anecdotes that were persuasive and compelling. To top it off, our son’s experience with other parts of the campus validated what he learned and experienced from the tour and he will begin his Earlham education this Friday!

We’ll be starting our own consulting firm soon, similar to TargetX. We’ll charge you only a few thousand dollars to come take your campus tour. If your guides walk backwards, we’ll tell them to walk straight ahead because it’s more natural. If they walk forward, we’ll instruct them to turn around “to make eye contact and connote friendliness.” If we feel like having integrity the day we’re at your college, we’ll tell you to hire good tour guides so it won’t matter how they walk.

You could also just send us money. We’re okay with that, too.
~CronkNews.com

A college’s goal when hosting visitors should be to show an authentic perspective to what the school is all about. When a family visits Albright, they tour in small groups or one on one with a student ambassador. The ambassador’s responsibility is to give the family a realistic preview to what the prospective student’s experience at Albright is going to be. This means catering the tour to the prospective’s interests and to carry a conversation on with them, not over them. All ambassadors must walk with the visitors because the prospective student is a peer, not a museum guest.

As a small private liberal arts college that promises student and faculty interaction, personal attention, and a caring environment, we wouldn’t have it any other way.

I have been a campus tour guide for the past two years at my college, and I would like to say that there has not been one tour when I have not been complemented on my uncanny ability to walk backwards so effortlessly and gracefully. Unless the tour group is unusually small, I can not imagine giving a tour without walking backwards!

My daughters and I have taken at least two dozen college tours. The worst are those in which the school (two very prestigious ones that I won’t name) can’t be bothered to summon more than a couple of student tour guides to lead a pack of 500 people, nor equip these poor kids with either a portable microphone or even a megaphone. We sucker parents and students stand in the hot sun, barely able to hear some kid screaming about something. It all feels very cynical on the part of the school, and it angers me. After we have driven several hours from home to visit a school, paid for hotels and meals, can’t these schools oblige us future tuition payers and students with a tour? I notice a lot of schools aren’t even bothering to take the names of prospective students who visit anymore; frankly, they don’t care.

I would echo Chris’s comments. As the director of admission at another small college, I’ve enjoyed reading the comments in this string. Their variety and occasional intensity are a nice reminder that tours are vital and that there’s no magic formula to getting them right.

Those who poke fun at colleges for consulting with outside experts perhaps do not understand what’s at stake for tuition-dependent small colleges. They have also, I think, missed the point, which isn’t really about walking backwards, but is about offering a distinctive, authentic, memorable experience to visitors.

Some people are missing the point here…don’t get fixated on the direction you walk…focus on what the student/family take away from their tour. Tours should give an authentic look at the college campus and engage as many of the five senses as possible. Tours should be about the college and not the guide. Walking backwards is just one symptom of the guide trying to make it about themselves and not the college. Do you really want the student/family to remember that you walked backwards or do you want them to remember the unique features of the college?

There is no doubt that college selections are emotional decisions and a good campus visit needs to elicit emotions, thus the need for less facts and more stories during campus tours. At the end of the day the “facts of colleges” are pretty similar, it’s the stories that differentiate.

Training tour guides is serious business, when you consider that each enrolled student can be worth up to $50,000 in revenue (per year). Colleges would be crazy to not do everything in their power to offer the best campus visit experience possible. To those who doubt the need for consultants to help colleges either do not realize how many colleges and universities do not emphasize an authentic visit or do not think an authentic “inside look” is important. I am sure the gatekeepr schools that can enroll a class 3 times over from their applicant pool don’t need to have a killer visit program, but there are 2500 colleges out there that do need one.

I think we may be missing the point this article is making. Walking backwards is symbolic of a shift in the economy and the expectations of families and millenials.

We are no longer talking at, we are speaking with; tour guides are no longer leading the group, they are imparting their experiences. Walking backwards is a symbol of the old way – fact and figures- similar to the way many of us once looked at the economy – what they tell us is true and since everything is “okay” nothing can go wrong, right?

Today it’s about the truth in advertising and experiencing that truth. A product lasts for only so long, but a memory lasts forever. A college experience gives us all memories and tools that are meant to last us for a lifetime, so that we can enhance our lives and others if we so choose.

Turning to talk to a group face to face, no matter how large and dropping the facts and figures for personal stories is simply the metaphor of our economy. We want to know what we are getting is real and not smoke and mirrors.

To all the tour guides out there, whether you walk backwards or not, please just tell the truth – all of it – on your tours. Throw in the facts and figures they want to know along the way. I will guarantee your honesty and enthusiasm will provide a memory that will last a lifetime.

Our job is to help families find the right fit for their investment, let’s not lose sight that we do this for higher education and the students who seek it.

This is the silliest news article I have seen in NY Times!. The article seems to imply there are only two choices – walk forward or walk backward! This article completely ignores the in between that is so common in any guided tour – campus, museums, zoos, nature trails and so on. Here is how it works.

You, the guide walk with the crowd in forward direction until you reach a point of interest. You stop there and turn around and converse about the point of interest. Conversation complete, you turn around and move forward to your next stop. is that simple!

At SNHU, we do a great job of blending personal stories along with providing the major factual information that parents and students want to know. I think it’s great to encourage stories, be innovative, and non generic.

Yet, I think you need to train a tour guide to know it’s audience. Not every group of people are going to want the same things on tour based on their needs. Some will want only the facts and others the experience matters most.

Most importantly, I think schools need to find a format that best fits and articulates the experiences of their institutions. I would caution, that if everyone jumped on the bandwagon, what was once was considered trendy now has become generic.

I think the major part is setting the expectations with your tour guides and training them appropriately. I see our tour guides as full fledged members of our admission office and valuable asset. We give them clothes, valuable job experience, and intensive training.

My question is that when we talk about college tours, there are no metrics, surveys, or studies that measure the effectiveness of a personalized with more stories. Perhaps I am not aware of them. I am very interested in this topic and would like to see a “white paper” or solid research. It would be nice to see an actual survey or evaluation results saying that this type of tour is better than a traditional one. I think the only research that institions are limited to would be reports from a consultant. While that is useful, it doesn’t measure the effectiveness of a tour guide program. For example what percent of students find something that was said on tour versus the percentage of parents. At SNHU, our next step is to try to evaluate that process and develop better metrics.

Overall, I enjoyed this article and some of the ideas shared by others.

No matter what you conclude after the tour, know that the material presented is loosely scripted (topics, not specific words, are set) and all tour routes are prescribed at the schools you visit. Some tour guides are better than others about sounding like they are speaking off the cuff.

As for the UVA video, it seemed like it was done FOR the tour, not TO the tour.